Bangladesh one of Asia’s least tree-filled countries

Bangladesh is among the countries with least forest in Asia, according to the data of Asian Development Bank, 2016.
Bangladesh having 11.2 per cent of forest areas of the total area of the country is among India, Mongolia and Pakistan with the least forest, ANN reports based on the data.
Laos has the highest percentage of forest area which is 92.1 percent of the total area of the country,
Bhutan (81.5), Brunei (79.7) and South Korea (63.7) are also among those Asian countries which have a leading forest area. Malaysia and Indonesia have also good share of forest land.
India’s forest cover is only 24.1 per cent of the total land area, according to the report.
Pakistan fares poorly in terms of total forest area as it has merely 1.9 per cent of its land area under forest cover.
In terms of numbers, China, Indonesia, and Malaysia make up more than half of the forested lands in Asia.
China’s forest cover remains 24.8 per cent of the country’s land area, Indonesia’s is 62.7 per cent and Malaysia has 67.6 per cent.
While China is a major exporter of wood products, ranking first globally in wood-based panel production, Indonesia and Malaysia are top producers of tropical timbers.
Globally, forests cover 30 per cent of the total land area, according to the latest report from Global Forest Resources Assessment 2005, led by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations.
However, the world is still losing an area of forest equivalent to the total area of Bhutan, Fiji and Brunei Darussalam combined each year - or 200 km sq per day, as per the report.